In all fairness, Serperior does learn Gastro Acid, so Azumarill and other Sap Sippers can't fully counter it. And in the double move period where Serperior is using all of its moves regardless of resistances, Serperior will be able to accumulate boosts even with the attempts to manipulate its AI.
That being said, outside of a turn 0 shield, Serperior will be powerless against any ability nullification like Skill Swap or Gastro Acid.
Ability Shield would just block the suppression. And Serperior doesn't need double attacks to get Leaf Storm boosts when it can just boost off the NPCs anyway, or if you assume a whole party of Sap Sippers then it just won't get boosts from Leaf Storm anyway.
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Introduction
Despite all initial expectations and type advantage, I have to say that Incineroar may be solo Azumarill’s greatest challenge yet thanks to its combined aspects of frustration. Game freak has truly made an masterpiece of a boss that surpassed the worst nightmares I could imagine, even beyond the evil Incineroar thread, and so I applaud them for making this mon so hateable as it was meant to be. This solo gave me so much grief that I had to give it a break and wrote up all my frustrations with it ahead of time, which may not be reflective of the final strategy, so I will lead with the details of the successful run first and put the rest afterwards. I think I have at least 40 new Switch clips since before I started the raid, mostly failed attempts.
Final Strategy
Azumarill is the standard 252 HP/252 Attack Adamant Azumarill. Tera Fairy Play Rough is the typical STAB of choice, and Belly Drum/Mud-Slap/Substitute are all here to enable setup. Lansat Berry is necessary to break through Bulk Up (more on that later).
My main issue was that there was not enough time before the debuff reset, and maybe I could have been more focused and inputted faster at many points especially in the first turns (I would usually be half paying attention and only get one move in before the first reset when I could get 2), but in the bigger picture, the more meaningful solution was to change the situation I was in and be more selective with the turns I was taking if I only had so many to spend. It is a lesson I have learned before in the context of the enemy being less likely to hit if they have less turns to do so, but one I have taken for granted with how generous the timer usually is. Despite saying this I did end up reordering my moves very late in so that I could go from Mud-Slap to Substitute to Belly Drum to Play Rough in one move instead of two in the order I would prefer to use them.
With more experience and a vision of what a successful run should look like, I started cutting my losses and ending more runs early if it was looking like the full setup would take too much time, particularly about trying to heal back lost HP from chip damage. I started to try my luck with keeping runs going after Substitute broke instead of trying to chase turns healing and setting it back up. I even started only going for 4 Mud-Slaps, since ultimately these were mainly for peace of mind after the third to charge tera, and ideally just going for one Substitute and Belly Drum without getting hit or overshooting for 6 turns of setup. All this would hopefully allow me an extra turn or two in viable runs to finally get the necessary hits in time that I was missing, in total having about 4 hits of time based on a run where I got 3 non-crits and 1 crit.
Successful Run
In the successful run, I had an early burn from Gardevoir's Synchronize as well as a Life Dew motivating me to keep going. I was able to set up the 4 Mud-Slaps and Substitute and Belly Drum in 6 turns.
I landed a non-critical Play Rough, missed, landed a crit to open up the shield, and got another non-crit.
Incineroar managed to break my Substitute, but 2 more crits came through to break the shield right before Incineroar's debuff reset, and a noncrit did just enough chip to end it while it missed its turn post shield-break. This is pretty much just what happened, and all the motivation for why I did this will be below if you want to read it.
Overall I feel like this raid is one of the worst to not have some kind of proper tool/counter for its gimmick (Taunt/Focus Energy/Unaware/Malamar) as well as just being a particularly resilient personal demon for me with the RNG being at its worst. But I knew Azumarill could beat it with the tools it does have, I just needed to execute it, and that's what matters to me in the end.
Wasted Time
Incineroar completely disrespects your time. Here is a demonstration of what you have to go through every time you reset the raid. For added effect, imagine me copy pasting this every time in every section, or even in between every paragraph.
Arcanine’s Intimidate
Incineroar’s Intimidate
Azumarill’s Attack fell!
Incineroar’s Intimidate
Dudunsparce’s Attack fell!
Incineroar’s Intimidate
Gardevoir’s Attack fell!
Incineroar’s Intimidate
Arcanine’s Attack fell!
The wild Incineroar used Snarl! (with the tera animation).
It’s not very effective on Azumarill.
(It also might have crit someone.)
Azumarill’s Sp. Atk fell!
Dudunsparce’s Sp. Atk fell!
Gardevoir’s Sp. Atk fell!
Arcanine’s Sp. Atk fell!
The wild Incineroar used Taunt!
It doesn’t even matter who falls for the taunt but I feel like it’s me when I keep coming back to this raid.
Notably, the Taunt is meant to be at 95% time, but Incineroar takes so long to start the battle it’s practically a turn 0 move and even the 90% reset only takes a couple turns to happen, and so he basically just cheats you out of 30 seconds of gameplay. I actually measured the time it takes from the raid’s “beginning” (first Intimidate proc) to the battle menu to appear (without an Intimidate user on my end). On one attempt, Incineroar landed a Snarl critical and it took 35.74 seconds, while without a crit it took 33.20 seconds. This may not be precise but it is longer than the length of a single Switch clip. Similarly, while I was cycling through solo attempts, I decided to compare if running from battle took longer than just resetting the game. I started from when I saw all the NPC pokemon and ended when I returned to the overworld and clicked the tera raid crystal. It took 49.98 seconds to run and 43.32 seconds to reset the game, so I decided to just go for group raid resets to lock in from that point on. I play on cartridge with an original Switch so I feel like the bottleneck of load times for the latter could be even faster in theory.
Is it much different to waiting 3 minutes to start the Dragonite raid? Maybe not just comparing the number of seconds waited, but at least that was a conscious choice I could make. Against Incineroar, the game has forcibly made the choice for you to wait. I think the most difficult aspect of the Incineroar raid with Azumarill is that you effectively only have less than 50% of the visible time (after the opening wastes at least 5% of the time) or 5 minutes to fight it, assuming it is the standard 10 minutes, because when it gets to the debuff reset, there is no recourse or buffer to save the run, not even Defense Curl because Darkest Lariat will ignore it and nearly OHKO from +6, so I am bottlenecked into dodging everything. The only saving grace I have is the relatively recent addition of Substitute to my set, giving one potential extra chance to live and land a single hit after the reset, potentially breaking the shield and giving me an extra turn. The reason I focus on time so much is because I lost quite a few attempts to barely not getting a crucial hit in before this reset, though other times I would just die while I was still on pace even before the reset.
The worst part of this to me is that it is meaningless. My first thought about Incineroar having Intimidate was that Azumarill would not have to care about it because Belly Drum just maximizes attack. But game freak decided to double down on its time wasting aspect. Snarl is similarly irrelevant to me regardless of if it hits, crits, misses, or lowers my Special Attack stage. Taunt can range from either nothing if it hits me because I just use Mud-Slap or the other NPCs, to a bit annoying if it hits Dudunsparce, but sometimes Incineroar will just kill the NPCs before it wears off anyway, so I don’t really care who it hits either. More meaningless aspects that just serve to stall this specific strategy include the initial reset, Incineroar stealing tera orb charge after I have terastallized and start attacking, and also the Earthquake that actually hit surprisingly often, but also just burns more time for Incineroar to get closer to the debuff reset that ends the run. Also if you have any NPCs who have any type interaction with Earthquake or even dodge it, it just adds another text prompt. And another thing is when you don’t dodge Earthquake yet you can tell because it says the NPC dodged it and those prompts appear in slot order, so I already know it’s over yet I have to go through the whole charade of fainting and respawning just to leave, and it might just be me but the scripted Earthquake doesn’t even seem to have an animation when it kills you. Even Incineroar’s preferred move of Flare Blitz just wastes time with not very effective and recoil prompts, Bulk Up has 2 stat increase messages, and Darkest Lariat I don’t see as much but probably wastes as much time with the tera animation.
As such, you may wonder if it is viable to just wait for Incineroar’s reset to start fighting, as was the case with Dragonite. I do not believe so, because Game Freak put it at the sweetspot of the middle of the raid instead of near the start. This means that I would have to wait about 5 minutes just to even start an attempt that could immediately fail and only lasts about 5 minutes itself, when I could be spending that same waiting time on just beating Incineroar anyway. Assuming it is a standard 10 minute raid, there would technically be an extra 30 seconds to work with if starting from 55% time remaining, but I don’t feel like the difference is really worth it in practice compared to just playing out the battle from the start. Also he gets to put the shield up if you wait, so you can’t take advantage of AI support during setup.
AI Partners
The AI partners I settled to lock in were Dudunsparce, Arcanine, and Gardevoir. My main goal was to get a paralysis user early to allow for more free turns. It is not ideal that Dudunsparce is in slot 1 as it will use a defense cheer instead of attacking, but Arcanine and Gardevoir’s various support allows for some more room for error with more Bulk Up uses and HP management respectively. Sometimes Arcanine can burn Incineroar early which is not ideal for turn denial but is still workable just to survive stray hits, and also by Gardevoir’s Synchronize if it lives a very early unboosted Flare Blitz and gets burned and doesn’t get Iron Headed for some reason. I have noticed that Gardevoir will often go for Dazzling Gleam more than Life Dew early on until it runs out of its 10 PP, which can be an issue because it may not use it when I need to set up and save turns, and then it usually doesn’t run out until when I’m attacking and just wastes time.
Initial attempts were with the team locked in from the last Azurill fight (Drifblim/Corviknight/Sylveon). Drifblim is alright for burns, I noticed Sylveon is like Gardevoir and likes to Moonblast, and Corviknight’s speed control was appreciated to get an extra Mud-Slap in before Incineroar’s attack but paralysis does the same thing.
As an aside, I got the legendary 3 Intimidate team when I did not need it at all. I was able to take a few extra hits and my sub actually took a normal hit in the middle, but later on I think Incineroar just was not killing the intimidaters enough thanks to Mud-Slap.
Lansat Berry
(This is just my most recent picture of Lansat activating, not from the successful attempt.)
The Lansat Berry is said to be a legendary berry that supposedly brings joy when holding it. In this case, it is the key to turning Azumarill’s dream clear into reality for a humble physical attacker who has no critical rate boosting moves to break through the defense boosts in a reasonable time. It does mean forgoing another item for an outcome that is already theoretically possible, but a 50% critical rate is the best chance Azumarill has for a realistically achievable win in practice.
This was necessary before for Blastoise and Meganium, but unlike those, there was a potential chance of just brute forcing it with Scope Lens/Razor Claw for 12.5% odds since Azumarill had the entire raid’s time to spam Play Rough. Here there’s no spare time to burn through all the PP of Play Rough because you only get a few hits at all to break down the shield, so every one of them needs to count and crit.
Fortunately, activating Lansat’s 25% HP requirement is trivial compared to my previous attempts at Blastoise and Meganium, thanks to Substitute allowing for finer HP manipulation than with just Belly Drum alone, so there is not really much benefit to Scope Lens/Razor Claw at all. With their powers combined, they can make it happen from full HP (if Gardevoir doesn’t randomly Life Dew in the middle), and sometimes Incineroar can help chip into it with some early survivable hits. It is still possible to get into a situation where it’s awkward to proc and just wastes time, like if you Substitute first or get chipped to have to rely on random heal cheers to get in Belly Drum range which might overheal. And sometimes the bigger issue is actually keeping Substitute up when he keeps hitting it and causing a net time loss. But actually getting to trigger Lansat is usually not what ruins the run first.
General Strategy
The execution of the first strategy I settled on was very simple on my end. I use Mud-Slap about 4 times and hope for the AI to inflict paralysis before I feel safe to set up, though I do like to go for 5 because paralysis will go away once the shield goes up, and that’s when Incineroar is at its most dangerous with outspeeding again, scripted Earthquake, and also being in the 50% HP zone of double attacks. I want to get Belly Drum, Lansat, and Substitute up in no particular order, but I do like just going for Lansat when I notice I’m in the threshold just to get it out of the way. Incineroar breaking Substitute too early can be saved but is usually not worth the time. I feel like I justify using Mud-Slap to myself often when I am low on HP instead of healing, because if I die then I can say I would have died anyway. After the setup is done, I tera and mash Play Rough in the top slot (because the move slot randomly resets to the top a lot and I want to avoid any trouble with that) and hope for crits for the rest of the fight, as well as not getting hit.
This is the main attack I am working with. If all goes well, Incineroar can die in about 4 crits. It is very fortunate that Incineroar is weak to Azumarill’s STAB because I don’t think there would be enough time otherwise.
+6 252+ Atk Huge Power Tera Fairy Azumarill Play Rough vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Tera Dark Incineroar on a critical hit: 3120-3672 (26.9 - 31.6% of 35x hp boss) -- guaranteed 4HKO
I could use Tera Blast for perfect accuracy, but I do not like it and it is much slower to animate. Perhaps it is my own sentimental folly, but I would rather use the move Azumarill learns naturally than a universal imitation.
Luck
I got very unlucky throughout my attempts on the first night, mainly in terms of Incineroar always hitting its moves with -5 accuracy at the moment a run started looking viable. I don’t know what’s different about this raid but it felt so much more harder to dodge everything compared to others, and it was more insult to injury when Incineroar would always manage to land a hit in the clutch, just turns away from victory. Somehow Incineroar would always manage to land some combination of Earthquake or a move right before the reset to break Substitute and/or kill Azumarill, and more often than not it felt like I was barely one input off getting a second good hit on the shield in before the reset triggered. The one time I finally managed to get it, it turns out the shield could barely take 2 crits anyway. I’m not sure of its exact size because stevecook’s site or the data it loads seems to be down, but I assume it’s about 40% based on that result.
Incineroar burning with Flare Blitz is annoying but not game ending since it doesn’t make a huge difference for survival and I can eventually heal cheer it off. It does waste time though so I would still rather just reset.
On average it felt like I was only getting about 2 hits in and then in the middle of inputting my next move before the reset interrupted it, though even just one non-crit is enough to open up the shield, and most of those attempts were not the fastest they could be by far.
In the best case, Incineroar just doesn’t hit me during my setup and I have more turns to work with that aren’t about healing. My best attempt yet got a very clean start with 2 crits to open up the shield and crack it, yet I managed to not crit 3 times in a row in the final moves.
He actually managed to hit Earthquake to break my sub and kill me and he wasn’t even at the debuff reset on timer. So I guess optimally you can get at least 5 hits in before the reset, and if I had broken the shield on any of those attempts, then even if he did get the reset he would have lost his turn because of the shield break and I could have crit one more time to win.
Misc. Annoyances
Substitute actually wastes a lot of seconds because it makes your mon pop in and out every time you use a move, but now I have noticed some more issues with it.
If you tera with a Substitute, the Substitute has to disappear for your mon to undergo the tera animation. But for some reason the mon pops back into the Substitute at the end of the tera animation, and immediately pops back out again to use the move. I guess they can’t assume you will be able to use the move right after tera but I still do not like it. I probably could have started using tera on the turn I substitute, but I never remember to because I don’t trust sub to last until I start hitting and Azumarill can kind of take resisted hits. Also, when you crit with a super effective move with a substitute, it says it’s super effective while the animation plays out, but then it ends and you pop back into the Substitute and then it displays the critical hit message that you can’t skip.
Bonus observations
I had this run that was almost perfect with getting 3 crits in a row to open up the shield and almost break it with 2 hits, but then he reset me and killed me twice but broke his shield on recoil. For the sake of it I still attempted to keep going and stall with Substitute since I could outspeed with paralysis and Gardevoir was just spamming Life Dew. I think I might have had it if I didn’t use one Mud-Slap.
In the same run I found out that Azumarill can survive a spread Earthquake from full HP, which is probably not a common position to be in but it is certainly a calc.
+6 0+ Atk Tera Dark Incineroar Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Azumarill with spread damage: 319-376 (78.9 - 93%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
In one case Incineroar somehow had 0 defense boosts by the time I started attacking, presumably due to a miracle of minimal Bulk Up usage and also many Leers. If I had crit I would never have noticed the difference.
At one point Incineroar’s name was replaced with my 361 HP which I have never seen before. I did notice a lot of weird HP animations starting from the HP I would have at the end of turn when Life Dew was involved though.
END
I do not like Incineroar but I respect him for putting up a novel challenge for Azumarill.
